How Tolkien Wanted To Change The Timeline Of Middle-earth...

[@superslayerguy]

I always like to think that with discrepancies like this, maybe Tolkien just “got it wrong”, since Middle Earth is supposed to be an ancient world he discovered, not something he created. Who’s to say he didn’t get a few things lost in translation when he was deciphering the red book :)

[@tiltskillet7085]

He did at certain points decide that these were stories passed down to and jumbled up by men, so it's not implausible Tolkien himself would approve of that framework.

[@superslayerguy]

@@tiltskillet7085 thank you that is high praise knowing The Professor probably considered most things “silly”

[@dominus1444]

That's one of the coolest things about middle Earth In my opinion. There's so much that is left uncertain and could be straight up incorrect leaving a lot of room open for you to build your own canon.

[@StalkerNaturaliste]

Sometimes I also have the intuitiin his imagination worked faster than his framework and he sometimes "lost control" on middle earth. Like with dwarf biology.

[@MrX-nv8kp]

I agree, it's a feature, not a bug, and gives it additional depth in my eyes. And leaves room for imagination 😁

[@Clyde-S-Wilcox]

Sonetimes it's astounding he ever published ANYTHING.

[@tiltskillet7085]

Haha, yeah. I wouldn't truly say "anything" but that he managed to get the truly massive LotR finalized for publication strikes me as an outright miracle.

[@KuK137]

@@tiltskillet7085 I suspect it was thanks to publisher and editor telling him to stop that nonsense, lock down that chapter while revising stuff that made no sense, and start working on another one. Alas, he got too big for editors telling him what to do which is why quality and speed of the work nosedived...

[@apstrike]

Travels back to 1956 and hands Tolkien a calculator.

[@viktormadzov5286]

Not a bad idea actually. Tolkein might have been a geneous at words, but preaty bacis at simple math.😅

[@Rory-ni5ng]

I'd also hand him 20 pencils and a large amount of paper

[@ansfelt8154]

My evening is now fulfilled, a new lore video dropped from the goat

[@SirBoggins]

Such a Jedi deserves his respect.

[@SvengelskaBlondie]

2:53 "deeply sundered in languages" If you want a good real life example of languages splitting up, look at Danes tongue with develop from previous germanic languages and later on split into three parts (Swedish, Norwegian and Danish). The interesting thing is that if we try hard enough, we can understand each others speech without too much problem in Scandinavia. The problem comes when you have stuff like really thick accents and regional dialects (Some Danes don't even understand certain dialects they have). Outside of really small local languages like Elfdalian, the closest we have to old norse/Dane's tongue is Icelandic and I'm unsure I would understand much of that as a Swede. Edit: "all this over 350 years" To further compare to this example, it took from around the ninth to the thirteenth century to go from Dane's tongue to Old Swedish period (ca. 1225-1375) and the younger Old Swedish period (ca. 1375-1526).

[@KuK137]

This. Or USA. Or China. Or India. Or Russian splitting into 2 because some rabid Bandera fascists in Austrian Galizien hated it was just rural, primitive version of Russian no one liked so they mixed in tons of Polish/German, added garbage spelling no one ever used and made up whole new "language" (and totally not badly spelt dialect) in less than 100 years...

[@AfroChef]

I never knew Meadros was hanging out for over 20 years, thank you for enhancing an already favorite of mine from the Silmarillion

[@alexanderthompson5713]

I really really don't like the idea of pushing the awakening of men earlier to be during the years of the trees. In the Silmarillion I absolutely loved the fact that the first sunrise is what triggered the awakening of men. Its cool and poetic, and gives a feeling that everything was part of Eru's plan.

[@simontaylor2143]

8:56 wait it took the Noldor 50 YEARS to return to middle earth?! How?! Was feanor just sailing round and round in circles?

[@tiltskillet7085]

For all of his many talents, I guess Feanor wasn't much of a navigator. :P More seriously, I'd imagine that refers to the Noldor that made the journey on their feet, rather than swanky stolen swan-ships. Still a crazy long journey though. If one can accept that it took that long, it makes the sheer feat of crossing the Grinding Ice astonishing.

[@General12th]

@@tiltskillet7085 To be fair, Odysseus took ten years trying to cross the Aegean Sea, so poor navigators are hardly rare in mythology.

[@simontaylor2143]

@@tiltskillet7085 yeah but didn't they arrive just in time to save Feanor's sons? They can't have been that far behind.

[@tiltskillet7085]

@@simontaylor2143 I'm not sure what you're referring to? Maedhros was saved by Fingon, but only after being held captive for years. Though I do think the published Silmarillion isn't clear about the lengths of time involved.

[@simontaylor2143]

@@tiltskillet7085(edit the following is wrong): when Feanor died the only reason all his sons and followers weren't wiped out as well was because the noldor who'd marched across the ice saved them

[@andrayellowpenguin]

I love the Silmarillion and all the history of Middle Earth legends, i think I've reread them more often than LOTR. It blows my mind how dedicated he was to making everything make sense together. As if real world mythology isn't full of inconsistencies. Men never had a serious concept of how long deep history is, so anything longer than 3-4 generations was considered "a long time ago, when the world was different". But i suppose his point would be the elves were different, being imortal. Ok, but if they used their own reckoning of years it doesn't need to be understandable for mortals anyway. It's a case of "wanting to be more religious than the Pope" 😂

[@picklerick.n.666]

God bless you and your work sir ❤ respect form Croatia-Europe ❤

[@SirBoggins]

Honestly, the only thing I would have wanted of Tolkien (as a newbie fan whose reading The Hobbit only for the second time) is more elaboration on the 4th Age and how it was in general compared to the previous ages. This could have been explored in Tolkien's scrapped sequel to LOTR, "The New Shadow" a much more "grimdark" work of his which Darth Gandalf should definitely make some videos on. Besides that, I would have wanted more detailed elaboration on how our current-day Earth (modern-day Arda) compares to Arda of Old, specifically how Middle-Earth, as well as the lands to the East (i.e., Rhûn) gradually changed from its shape in the 3rd and 4th ages to modern-day Eurasia of today or how Harad & Harondor became Africa and the Middle-East, as well as where all the free peoples and peoples of Arda went.

[@BlackJar72]

310 years is enough for 15 generations, which depending on how quickly the human population grew could get a pretty large number. As for language development and changes in appearance are, of course, another matter.

[@yorktown99]

Considering how much effort went into sorting out the chronology of the War of the Ring, and by extension the 2nd & 3rd Ages, it's not surprising that there was so much difficulty in sorting out the timelines of the Elder Days. "Quenta Silmarillion" itself sits at the intersection of myth & history. Effectively, the various myths of the Elder Days were constantly in flux (compare the Book of Lost Tales with what Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavril Kay put together). It also explains why "Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth" got cut: it tried to bring into clarity the murky pre-history of humanity's Fall (like in "Paradise Lost") where human memory was indistinct by showing it alongside the more big-picture understanding of a Noldorian Elf who grew up in Tirion-on-Tuna. This is also important when considering how Tolkien understood mythology itself. In his mind, myths are not merely keenly designed fables people told around the campfire. To Tolkien, myths exist and an imperfectly memory of actual historical events, passed on through folk stories, oral traditions, and religious rituals. The important point of comparison would be a figure in our world like King Arthur, a hero of old, mostly preserved in Welsh traditions, but having some un-embellished historical reality in the deep past. This is why Middle-Earth feels so lived-in, even in the movies: every abandoned bit of broken wall has a real story behind it, along with several isolated traditions that got tacked on. Until he began writing the Moria chapters, Tolkien was just telling fancy bedtime stories about trolls, dwarves, goblins, gnomes, dragons, elves, wizards, seafaring adventurers, and twee hobbits who just wanted to have a nice Christmas dinner in a cozy little home. What he discovered was that he was retelling and reimagining the world itself, showcasing epic heroism, bone-breaking tragedy, and the glorious hope of his own deeply Christian faith. No wonder that he never finished!

[@genovayork2468]

Learn basic English.

[@BookofCommonTerror]

Your comment reminds me of Tolkien’s letter to W.H. Auden where he describes how surprised he was to discover Saruman, the stewards of Gondor, and many other things. And I love that you conclude with Tolkien’s faith!

[@SamuelDiazBarajas]

I thanks for the video, I always thought interesting Tolkien's last writings.

[@General12th]

Hi Darth! I don't know why people keep saying Professor Tolkien wouldn't have liked the movies. After all, he didn't seem to like his own work.

[@cynfaelalek-walker7003]

Bro didn't have to roast Círdan at the end like that.😂

[@bristleconepine4120]

There are other problems within the Silmarillion, too. For example, Appendix A of LotR explicitly states that there were only three unions of Elf and Man, and goes on to name them as Lúthien with Beren, Idril with Tuor, and Arwen with Aragorn. What race, then, was Dior? Going by the timeline of the Silmarillion, combined with the Elven life cycle, Dior had to be Mannish, and it would be impossible for the editors of the Red Book of Westmarch to not know this, thus creating an irreconcilable paradox with the obviously canon LotR. I have generally felt that the timeline of the Silmarillion itself needed some edits. But yes, I agree with the final point: JRRT would have constantly made tweaks until the sun goes dark!

[@dlevi67]

Why would Dior have to be Mannish? He died violently, at the age of 36, which is compatible with both. Elrond and Elros only had to choose between Elvish and Mannish destinies at the end of the First Age, and they were 20 years older than Dior at his death. Also, note that other 'half bloods' (i.e. Elwing and Earendil) are considered Elvish 'just because' they went to Aman. This leaves Tuor in an interesting 'place', and justifies the assumption that he was numbered among the elves at some point, making the denomination of half-elven for Earendil a bit dubious, at least in retrospect. Elwing in turn is no more than a quarter Mannish, as Nimloth was fully Elven - and the fact that the union of Dior and Nimloth is not considered an Elf-to-Man union means that Dior was never considered 'Mannish'.

[@bristleconepine4120]

@@dlevi67 According to the essay *Laws and Customs among the Eldar,* Elves do not have children at less than one hundred years of age, and when they do have children, they do so at intervals no less than fifty years apart. If the timeline of the *Silmarillion* is correct, then Dior was having a family way to quickly to be an elf (and it makes you wonder what Nimloth thought of this). But yes, I agree that Dior was most canonically Elven. Unfinished drafts make for crazy contradictions!

[@dlevi67]

@@bristleconepine4120 Well... Earendil and Elwing had Elrond and Elros at age 29. (I agree that Tolkien's attempts at clarifying and expanding the mythology often result in more confusion!)

[@bristleconepine4120]

@@dlevi67 The argument for Dior's Mannishness would stipulate that Eärendil and Elwing (and also Elrond) were also both Mannish until they were given the Choice of the Half-Elven, which means that they don't break the only three unions of Elf and Mortal that LotR lists the way that Dior and Nimloth do.

[@dlevi67]

@@bristleconepine4120 Except that Elros had his first child at age 120, which is kind-of-late for a Man who was only given ("Númenorean") long life at age 58. Note that Elros's Mannish ancestors would have had a life span of ~75 years, so I don't particularly buy the idea that half-elven had 'Mannish' characteristics until their Choice (and I say so as a 57 year old, highly conscious that his best years are behind him - never mind the ability to father more children). In all, I'm not particularly convinced by any of the arguments for Dior's Mannishness (and - as pointed out in the video - the argument 'from Elven custom' is particularly weak, as it would not fit the demographics never mind of the first Elves, but of the Elves in Aman). I think it's one of the many inconsistencies of a mythology that was never intended to be history.

[@cavetroll666]

thanks for the video cheers from Canada.

[@SirBoggins]

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

[@GaryM67-71]

Frodo then stupidly made the wrong decision. Duped!

[@SirBoggins]

@@GaryM67-71 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@Tar-Elenion]

Note that in _Elvish Ages & Númenórean,_ (Nature of Middle-earth, 1 XVIII) the ca 700 years or 50 years (etc) for the rebellion and return of the Noldor is reduced to three years or less. This should also indicate Maedhros being chained to the Thangorodrim for a much shorter period of time. Elven 'lefe-cycles' are a very late invention (ca 1969).

[@mechtim]

it could have been solved by just saying every year got longer after certain events as the gods got involved they pushed middle earth farther away from them thus extending the years.

[@gengisgio]

I agree with you: I am happy Tolkien never got to the point of making Arda "scientific" instead of "mythic" as it is in the version we all know and love. This mythical and magical tone where not everything can be measured and explained incredibly elevates the whole concept.

[@genovayork2468]

No, it doesn't, it exposes trash.

[@waltonsmith7210]

The scientific version isnt that different or bad.

[@SNWWRNNG]

My main issue with these planned changes was to have the sun and moon be around from the start as the celestial objects we know today. It really reduces the significance of the Two Trees, and if you want to make the astronomy realistic you should include Venus and not include Earendil as a star, with his Silmaril and his flying boat - a central figure in the Legendarium, and mentioned quite a bit in already-published LotR, to be the Evening Star with his Silmaril. I feel like Tolkien, after the Silmarillion was rejected for publication in the early 1950s, took a wrong turn when he revisited the project later in the 1950s and tried to make it more detailed and believable on the scientific and theological fronts. LotR's detail and sense of "feeling real" is great, but the Silmarillion was too mythical and too far developed to endure such a change in direction.

[@Childress25]

Another extremely well done video. Thanks!

[@nealjroberts4050]

I think Tolkien would have been greatly helped if he had realised he could have had a mythic timeline and an "actual" timeline together.

[@alanpennie]

The GRRM solution doesn't work if you have lots of immortal characters.

[@nealjroberts4050]

@alanpennie Elves aren't really immortal however.

[@frankladwig4640]

Hey you can’t just sneak that last part in about my boy Cirdan

[@General12th]

Unlike Cirdan, who never "snuck in" anything into anyone if you catch my drift.

[@KuK137]

This change is beyond idiotic. 60000 years is 6x the lenght of entire human civilization, by that point humans should be using blasters and star destroyers, not swords. Also, he thinks 300 years is too short to populate a continent? Did he ever heard of this 'usa/canada/mexico' thing that did just that, went from tiny population to easily 50x the Middle Earth population in mere 250 years...

[@paulemge9156]

I always felt that the second and third age are ridiculously long. But just think if Tolkien had access to a modern word processor.

[@baystated]

Lots of number, dates, and I wish there were some diagrams to help sort them all out.

[@chriswerth918]

Fascinating. I never heard of it. And I will absolutely ignore it. Because those changes are bringing up muuuch more problems than they solve, in the first place.

[@skatemetrix]

The biggest missteps in the development of the legendarium was Tolkien trying to historically and scientifically justify the mythology he created. He was considering abolishing flat Arda for instance which would have gutted the Silmarillion. I think very small tweaks could be applied to explain demographics plus linguistic and cultural development. For instance 144 Elves originally awoke, but some versions claim these Elves then chose to awake thousands of other slumbering Elves. As for Men, they could have awoken in their tens of thousands but in distinct groups: Men of pale skin, of dark skin, proto-Easterlings, proto-Harad, proto-Hobbits, etc. They all spoke some form of common language. Then Sauron or Morgoth came and corrupted many Men. After some years there was a revolt when Men realized the promises of the Dark Lord were lies. These Men were slaves forced to build a mighty tower (Tower of Babel myth) to glorify the Dark Lord. But, with the rebellion succeeding, either Sauron or Morgoth, to mar Illuvatar's work and to spite him, confused Men, muddied their memories and their speech so that the different groups of Men could not understand each other and thus they would distrust the other groups. The Dark Lord returned back to Angband or Utumno having broken the unity of Men and utterly divided them by language and broken memories of the past. In all groups of Men there is this fear and they flee the place of their origin. Some of these Men, mainly the forefathers of the Edain and some Easterlings, travel west. Thus Men wonder as nomads yet make great haste to put as much distance from their place of origin as possible.

[@General12th]

I like these ideas!

[@Tar-Elenion]

_>"For instance 144 Elves originally awoke, but some versions claim these Elves then chose to awake thousands of other slumbering Elves."

[@RiwenX]

Love the BFME music 😥😥

[@istari0]

If memory serves these planned updates also included making Arda a sphere right from when it was first created and having the sun and moon also be created at the same time as Arda. So much of The Silmarillion would have to have been rewritten to account for all these massive changes that it might not resemble the published book much at all.

[@GortholMormegil]

I've read 'Myths Transformed' from 'Morgoth's Ring' and 'Time and Aeging' from the 'Nature' some months ago, it was so intriguing that i've then created for fun my personal version with new dates of the 'Annals of Aman' and the 'Grey Annals/Tale of Years' to try to mitigate some of these problems and yet save the 'classic' legend of the published Silmarillion (with the Lamps, the Trees and only later the Sun and Moon). I've retained the ratio 9,582 Sun-years for a Tree-year but i've established the Valian-age as 144 Tree-years instead of 100 (to create another reason besides the 'Cuivienyarna' for why the Elves will use this metric for their 'long-year' yén during the Solar-years). So the 'Days before Days' are significantly longer now because they also change from 35 to 36 ages. Then i've changed the Years of the Trees from 1500 to 1700, so i've been able to give Oromë 50 more Tree-years before he find the Elves after their awakening and also to expand the Chaining of Melkor in Mandos (3 VA) from 300 to a more appropriate punishment of 432 Tree-years. The Flight of the Noldor is still 5 Tree-years however since Angband was already somewhat 'active' under Sauron and the Balrogs and for a powerful Vala like Melkor 2-3 Tree-years for rising Thangorodrim (which are also 'artificial' peaks) is still believable to me. The biggest change is that i've expanded the first part of the First Age by 300 Sun-years (in the end it become 890 years in total instead of 590). This by postponing the begin of the Siege of Angband by 100 years, the begin of The Long Peace (after the first attack by Glaurung) by another 100 and then the coming of Men into Beleriand by another 100 (therefore the timeline of the most important period with the break of the siege and the stories of Beren, Túrin, Maeglin, Thingol, Eärendil remains exactly the same). But now the Atani enter Beleriand in 610 FA instead of 310 FA and so they had a lot of additional time for falling under the Shadow before the begin of the Siege (yet it is said that Morgoth was able to secretly leave Angband anyway) and additional time for their march to Beleriand and their sunderings. It is obvious that this relative short time it's not enough practically for 'anything' scientifically, but that's also the beauty of the myth. And since the origin of Men it's hidden in the dark anyway they could've awakened in Hildórien in very huge numbers compared to the Elves, and also already divided by race each developing their own 'language' in the very first few decades of their existance.

[@Byenie0912]

My issue is that they can create huge cities and fortresses in a matter of years with fewer population

[@tiltskillet7085]

Hah, the midichlorian comparison is so appropriate.

[@michaelpalmer1853]

If Ulmo is omnipresent wherever there's water, the not finding humans explanation doesn't work.

[@hannibalbarca7902]

As if the channel wasn't awesome enough already he put BFME music in the background...

[@DavidMacDowellBlue]

I am unaware of any evidence in Tolkien that Men arose past the stone age. It seems clear in Middle Earth they advanced quite a bit faster than in our world, but also Tolkien's notes indicate Sauron (or Morgoth) did not want Men to leave their homelands. Only the peoples who fled away from the Dark Lord's rule spread out, and they began with fewer numbers at first. Those under teh sway of darkness spread more slowly, or so it would seem to me.

[@PonderLust]

Men awakened after the first kin slaying, with the rising of the sun. This is important.

[@muratbayraktar5035]

Rip Cirdan

[@MrX-nv8kp]

I always assumed, that the immortal races have only a vague relationship to time, a few years, or thousand years more or less, who cares 😂 So the early stories somehow read like memories of immortals, only written down later, so memories may have differed between beings, so contradictions can be expected especially thousands of years later. It's the same with ppl come into being in "small" numbers, how many are these? 2, or a dozens,100, or even a million? Given, that both men and elves were found much later, who can really tell how many were there, especially for men, with none of the original men still living? In short I always read it as myths of middle earth, even to the immortal powers

[@SirBoggins]

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

[@ohmygordd9426]

could you not have a valian year mean both 144 solar years AND 10 solar years. maybe before the fall of the two trees it meant the former and after, the latter. perhaps you could explain it by saying that the change reflects the faster fading of the elves who had left valinor; the elves who left changing the meaning of an elven year to better describe their shortened lifespans? that way the flight of the noldor actually took 50 years because it was documented by exiled noldor elves living in middle earth AND the time spent in middle earth before the discovery by orome was actually supposed to be quite long as the meaning of elven year employed there is meant to be the 144 year version as we’re getting that information from an elf in valinor.

[@waltonsmith7210]

Did men in Arda awaken at a level beyond the Stone Age? Do we know that? I like the 50,000 years for human development; it makes much more sense. Also midi-chlorians arent even that bad,people just misunderstand the concept.

[@amorbailey6220]

Time is relative in theory. It is one of the harder parts of world building and a massive resource dump if you overthink a story. You have the same problem when you compare religious cosmology and mythology to sciences like geology or biology. One source can say the world was made in seven days but the other evidence proves that it is not possible. And as a linguist and a professor I am sure those discrepancies kept him up late at night. I think in LOTR the fact you have a mortal view point from the Hobbits and the audience identifies with that more readily than elf or dwarf years is withstanding. Conversely, from the view point of Gandalf or Galadriel time would seem indifferent to the audience. I mean, what does a balrog do to pass time for two thousand years? All in all, I think its an interesting conundrum when looking at Tolkien's lore and the greater body of related works that is better left under the soft world building category rather than trying to make the math add up. Good topic and video!

[@tscchope]

There's another solution to why did the Elves, Dwarves and Humans not meet. Humans were created by Morgoth. The Valar were not going to let their creations meet Morgoth's. The Numenorians were an attempt to rescue humanity. One that ultimately failed.

[@HalasterBlackCloak-u2w]

Oooo. I didnt know morgoth created humans. Huh.

[@tscchope]

@@HalasterBlackCloak-u2w My headcannon. Tolkein did not say Morgoth did, but it would explain why humans never really got on with Elves and Dwarves.

[@OljeiKhan]

​@@tscchopeyour headcanon is extremely wrong because Elves and Men are called the Children of Illuvatar. They are explicitly stated to be his creations. It is also explicitly stated that Melkor cannot create, only corrupt that wich has already been created.

[@dafyddthomas6897]

J k Rowling can't do maths either

[@ubertuber3d]

Tolkien considering his timeline too short is crazy. In most fantasy worlds a couple hundred years is a long time. ASoIAF barely has 300 total.

[@tiltskillet7085]

That's just back to Aegon's Conquest. Which is by far the most filled-in era, so it's easy to focus there. If you instead look at Martin's approved conception of the history and mythology as a whole...which is maybe not so different than looking at Tolkien's complete timeline rather than just LotR and The Hobbit...it goes back many, many millennia. I think those time periods are even less detailed than Tolkien's for the most part, but there's still a vague frame of imagined history.

[@darkjudge8786]

This is why the Silmarillion should not have been published and channels loke this ruin every. Just enjoy the main books

[@DavidAGIII]

For some reason most people will always choose to have more content, even if it waters down what they fell in love with to begin with